I never started watching The Walking Dead though I meant to for a long time, but something about it just kept putting me off - seemed like it wasn't true to the zombies I've always liked and too much like a soap opera. Then I heard George Romero describe the show as something like a "soap opera with zombies" and then I felt a lot better about not watching it.

You and your crew helped bring American horror back from the edge of yet another death with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, then kept the reanimated corpse jumping with MARTIN, DAWN OF THE DEAD, and CREEPSHOW.

The genre of horror would not have flourished without you. You will be missed, but always remembered.

What happened? Yesterday I was reading how excited he was for his new movie "Road of the Dead" and now he's gone.Man...this year gets worse by the minute.

He wasn't directing ROAD OF THE DEAD, just providing the original story idea and producing it, so it should go ahead as the last semi-official DEAD movie. Hopefully it will be a nice tribute. It's inspiring that he was still so active and invested in filmmaking even though he was sicker than the public knew.

Almost ten years ago I was lucky to see him in a talk given a major film festival here back in 2008. Here's the highlights as I remember them:

He said 'man' alot in conversation which reminded me a lot of "the dude". Was really laid back and expressed that he was just really happy to make movies, let alone have an audience.

His favourite (at the time) film of his was Martin

Much more interested in characters who live in the grey area of life, life's not just black or white.

He said not to read too much into his films as 'he's not that deep' when someone asked him about how zombies in NOTLD represented a Freudian view of leftist revolution.

They cast Duane Jones in NOTLD not caring whether he was black or white and the screenplay didn't change because of his race. According to him, the movie seemed to take a life of it's own when they found out that Martin Luther King was assassinated as they were loading the gear into the car after they finished the film.

I'll never forget, as a kid, seeing NOTLD for the 1st time (it was even shown at our school). It was really cool to see our home town show up as one of the rescue stations. RIP George, you'll never be forgotten.

Course, now we'll have to sit through hundreds of Youtube comments along the lines of "You think he'll come back as a zombie?" etc.

Unless he gets cremated. That'll ruin their unoriginal jokes.

I've never seen a George Romero film but I am fully aware of the massive influence he's had on all forms of fiction.Zombies are unbelievably popular, so much so that it became an over-saturated medium.

So even if I haven't seen one of his movies (I will eventually), if he never existed I wouldn't have experienced some ofmy favorite pieces of art like The Walking Dead and The Last Of Us.

I saw him at a con a couple years ago, and even then he seemed... A little off? Not as energetic as usual, and frail even for someone in their mid 70s. It was an interesting Q and A though, and he's an excellent film maker and will be missed.